The Glade 4.0

I suck at posting... my response was supposed to include the same quote from Hopwin you used, and was a response to that, not to you.

However, since you agree with him for the most part, there is nothing that disallows free will even if the start and end points are known to someone outside the system, at least the concept of free will is being used here.

I would say, if God is omnipotent, He could dictate all ends and outcomes.

Moreover, taken into account His omnipotence, whether you view time and action as an infinite contiuum or infinite domain of infintesimals, each moment and action that occurs is an end itself. Thus, it is reasonable to conclude if God is omnipotent and omniscient, he had dictated the outcome of each of those infintesimal conclusions.

Deterniminsm is the same way, in the aspect of physics: all action can be described as the result of action. I won't speak to the physics of Very Small and Fast Things since that is not something I possess great knowledge of.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

See, I reject the notion that if there is a God and he has some plan, that the actions or decisions made by people on this planet have any such influence on that plan.

I can get on board with that up unto the point it flies in the face of our observable understanding of the mechanics of the Universe which are deterministic.

Even the non-deterministic behavior we've observed doesn't go a long way toward explaining free will.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

So are you stating the position that any decision made by any person is reducible to an equation with only one answer?

Which is especially ammusing with how christians condem people for certain things, like being gay, cause if god does exist and nothing happens she/he doesn't allow then it doesn't go against her/his will, and if it does go against her/his will then god is fallible or not omnipotent, of course if god did exist I would go with the former and it's humans and the writing and further interpitation of the bible and what's right and wrong that's fallible.

That's what our current understanding of how the physical world works, essentially.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Yes. You are forced by the structure of your brain (which changes as you age), and the sensory inputs throughout your life, to determined actions. You are forced to actions that are similar to what your parents would do in your situation. Your choice is an illusion... it is the conscious experience of your brain tallying votes.

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"The map is not the territory."

I know, I'm just making sure I was understanding your position accurately, because I'm not sure I see where that has any bearing on the comment that our actions have no impact (free will or deterministic) on the grand plan, unless you are also taking the position that God cannot exist outside the bounds of what we understand to the universe.

If we assume a determnistic school of thought, that school of thought is that essentially the universe's unfolding is just the summation of infintesimal events occuring, all which unfold according to fundamental physical law and thus are predicated on the initial boundary conditions (i.e. the Big Bang or whatever theory we want to use).

To avoid confusion, I'm not likening this school of thought in any way to the idea that there is an omnipotent, omniscent force guiding the universe; only stating that neither leaves any room for free will.

If God, in your scenario, does indeed guide the macroscopic direction of reality but we are "free" to act within our accord within lesser contexts, I would argue that that's not free will, since we cannot, will not and furthermore, shall not (since it is a given axiom of this scenario) alter the macroscopic direction of the universe.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

By definition, the universe encompasses everything.

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"The map is not the territory."

Cosmology has not answered that questioned, definitively and likely never will.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

For the record, this thread was intended to be semi-tongue in cheek. Not nearly as serious of a discussion as it has become.

S'ok, though. Please continue.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

"Luck favors the prepared" - E

Heh, well we do excell at derailing threads here, like how my rant on weight loss turned into what color hair suits me better

Oh. Red, Definately!

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

Fortune favors the bold.

Who dares, wins.

That, however, isn't an endorsement of luck; it's the motto of the British SAS, one of the most elite special forces on the plant. It really means that you must seize the initiative to win.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Predeterminism is one of the most dreadful creeds I can imagine. This essentially reduces us all to automatons; lines of code or actors in a shitty play, unable to improvise or inflect.
What's worse is that we are self-aware.

Without Free Will...why?

Do you think that your brain violates the laws of physics, as we know them? Have you ever seen anything break the laws of physics? Why should you be exempt? Your actions are predestined like a bouncing ball is fated to bounce again.

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"The map is not the territory."

I don't think we're on the same page here, because these questions go beyond the physical. Which is o.k. (that we are not on the same page) as not everyone believes anything exists outside the physical.

And I'm not claiming any special knowledge or answers. But predeterminism in some way goes against the fiber of my being. I don't know how to fully explain it.

There is no proof that the physical even exists. We can see, touch, and hear things, but we can't prove they are really there. We can't prove 100% what will happen next. We exist only inside our minds. However, we can see patterns in what we experience happening around us. These are known as the laws of physics. By the same logic that a bouncing ball will bounce again, you will be forced to experience certain emotions, thoughts, feelings, and take certain actions.

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"The map is not the territory."

Based on the potential of something that just freaking happened not 20 seconds ago, I want to put in an unofficial second vote for Lucky.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

As Rafael almost pointed out in his disclaimer against "very small, very fast things", our current [lack of] understanding about certain quantum phenomena may actually throw a random number generator into the predestination mix. That said, even if measured quantum states are truly random (and I do not believe they are), that doesn't give us free will. It just throws some random numbers into the equations that decide our fate.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Quantum theory seems to follow a probabalistic framework, which may or may not be describable within a deterministic domain.

However, it still doesn't help with the theory of free will: ultimately, that leaves the consequences of our actions up to the fate of quantum particle behavior.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones